Grove/Atlantic Buys Tennessee Novel
April 16, 2010 A.E. Willis, an eighth-generation Southerner, has sold a novel based on her family’s history in Tennessee. The book was bought by Grove/Atlantic, the publisher of Cold Mountain. Stories of her father’s growing up in rural Pocahontas, Tennessee, during the 1940s and 1950s inspired Willis’s novel, to be titled The Lost Saints of Tennessee.
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In The Heretic’s Wife novelist Brenda Vantrease takes on Tudor England
April 15, 2010 is the author of two earlier novels: The Illuminator, set in England during the fourteenth century, and The Mercy Seller, set in fifteenth-century Prague. With The Heretic’s Wife, she brings her characters and readers into the relatively modern age of early sixteenth-century England. Henry VIII is king, and Vantrease’s main protagonist is the beautiful Kate Gough, a descendent of characters first introduced in The Illuminator. A former Nashville teacher and school librarian, Vantrease once again returns to the theme of censorship and faith, this time conveying the intensity and danger of the Tudor period. She appears at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on April 15 at 7 p.m.
Read moreIn her ninetieth year, Eleanor Ross Taylor Wins the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize—and $100,000
April 15, 2010 The Poetry Foundation has announced the 2010 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the winner of the award, which carries a stipend of $100,000, is Eleanor Ross Taylor. The widow of acclaimed novelist Peter Taylor, Eleanor Ross Taylor made no apologies in her youth for downplaying her own artistic dreams to support her husband’s stratospheric literary career. Nevertheless, with his encouragement, she wrote steadily during the years of their marriage, publishing her first book at age 40 and following it with a book, on average, every decade.
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Novelist Madison Smartt Bell talks with Chapter 16 about the art and artists of Haiti
Madison Smartt Bell, author of three critically acclaimed novels about Haiti, as well as a biography of Haitian resistance hero Toussaint Louverture, is a longtime supporter of a group of artists there. In response to the earthquake last January, Bell has joined with Nashville’s LeQuire Gallery to display the work of these artists, with proceeds to benefit both the artists and Haitian-run humanitarian organizations. Bell answered questions from Chapter 16 prior to his talk at the gallery on April 15.
Read moreIn The Atlantic‘s new fiction issue, Richard Bausch takes down the how-to industry for aspiring writers
April 14, 2010 Richard Bausch has never read a book of advice about writing fiction, and yet his novels and short-stories—not even to mention his writing awards—could fill a small library. In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, Bausch explains why he distrusts the vast, ever-growing, and frequently bestselling genre of how-to manuals for aspiring writers. Along the way, he makes a passionate and moving case for reading actual writers, the masters of their craft, instead:
Read moreAuthor Jay McInerney beefs up his high-tech cred with a (sort-of) review of the Apple iPad
April 14, 2010 Early adopters take note, Jay McInerney half-blogs his initial response to Apple's iPad over at The Daily Beast. Along the way, he opines on Amazon vs. Apple, quantifies his travel reading requirements, and questions the holiness of print. "I don't consider the magazine, as a physical object, to be sacred. It's that it's always been so much more convenient than its online incarnation." Not so much, anymore, McInerney says, now that the Fall issue of Vanity Fair in print and on the iPad are more-or-less the same size and weight.
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